IthacaLit

In the guise of a beggar, Odysseus returned to Ithaca.

Roger Bonair-Agard. The Poems

Where Brooklyn at?

Take the 3 train to the second to laststop. Van Siclen Avenue. Exit left outthe turnstile. Walk straight down the stairsand into the witching hours of EastNew York. Walk five steps and get your firstWalkman snatched from you right here.The Sony is less your concern than is the cassettelost in the street tax – Paid In Full – Eric B and Rakim.You’ve been playing this on loop sinceyou got off the plane damn near, and thisis your soundtrack to this new worldthat is still deciding whether or not you belong.1987 has turned on a dime and is aboutto get directly in your face. Constant elevationcause expansion. You’ve been robbedfor the first time. Brooklyn wantsto see what you’re actually made of.

In the basement, the blue light makessilhouette of everyone. Makes smoothexotic angles of every woman’s face.Dancehall gives the beauty, form.Ganja smoke, sweat and the rumyou just spilled on this sister’s neckare your sacraments of choiceright now. And she is moaning or sighinginto your collar, arms up and drapedover your shoulders to support her thickfull-bodied press up against you. Pelvisto pelvis to thick thigh, so your hands reachdown to cup her large behind. You dropyour hip on the Gregory Isaacs lyricWoman tend to the sickThe Q train rumbles underground nearby.The whole party feels the shudder.No one stops the groove.

1110 Fulton Street / Bedford-Stuyvesant 1989 / a pre-gentrify ekphrastic…jewels and all dat / the clothes was all datyou think you steppin to me / that’s where you take your fall at. Notorious B.I.G. (freestyle at 1110 Fulton)

See here – this corner bodega is where Biggiedropped freestyle bombs before anyone knewhe was the Greatest Of All Time, before the policestarted smiling at residents, before this bodegastarted selling soy milk and organic toilet paper,before it was a yoga studio before the bloodwas scrubbed with lye and rocksalt off the sidewalk by the fallen boy’s motherbefore we paraded Biggie’s coffin aloft throughthe streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant the livest onebefore beef with Pac, before white youth gotso goddamned brave enough to even ride the traininto Brooklyn, before slumlords fixed the toiletsand cleaned the lobbies and got rid of the ratsand didn’t come to the building with thugsto collect the rent, before Giuliani, evenbefore Manhattan got too expensive and chasedartists south who believed they werethe first artists ever to come here, becausethat’s always how white people Columbusbefore the bodega let you come into the storeto buy 25 cent loosies in the middle of the nightand sold them to you through a bullet-proof turnstileat eye-level from the street, before anyoneasked me for a credit check to rent a studio

they fixed the C/Shuttle stop at Franklinand Fulton, before the end of crack or the Reaganera, before Amadou Diallo and Dumboand Palladium was still there and Tyson champand NWA still together, and Left-Eyestill alive and they hadn’t cleaned the vialsoff the field we played on in Saturday leagueseven though families were there, and childrenwere being raised and the people asked forgood food and were ignored and were sentpatrol cars rolling their neighborhoods slowand no one was so goddamned proud of themselvesbecause they planted a community garden and calledthe cops on their neighbors with noise complaintsand boasted about the great West Indian foodand complained about how hard it was to findtofu, but the people here are so real, they said,and so alive, it was great to live here beforeeverybody decided to come.

All-America(n)

We’re in a dirt yard. In a corner, chitterlingsboiling in an old can - my woman, Temper(real name – true story) thought it was timeto bring me down South to meet the extended fam.We engaged – cubic zirconium ring – Crown Heights apartment.South which is still myth to my ears – still waterhoses and work songs, still sinister just beyondsight, in the trees – back of some unnameable woods.North Carolina. We drive eight hours from BrownsvilleBrooklyn – taking our time cuz it’s still1988 and crack is still king and we’re fiveblack people in a second-hand Cadillac ridingthe I-95. But now we in the yard and Big Mamain the house making mashed potatoes and friedchicken with the other women. We men (I’m 20) driveoff into Manson (real name – true story) - townwith no streetlights - town even the residents of Durham5 miles away can’t locate – we hit the piggly wiggly and get useach our own personal flasks of Mad Dog 20/20brown-bagged and brought back to the yard.

John, Temper’s brother, little older than me, sayhe don’t wanna hear his wife say shit to him except –and he mimic moans sexual ecstasy and calls his ownname – we laid out laughing right next to the outhouseall the tobacco leaf smell thick, thick in my nostrilfrom the field next door where we walked to gosee the Indian burial ground.

And John finally turns to me and says Rogbut… where you from tho? And I explain,Trinidad & Tobago, pair of islands all the waysouth in the Caribbean, and John say what partof America is that? So I continue explainingsovereignty, using words like independenceand island-nation, and saying six milesoff the coast of Venezuela. But Johnis confused, shakes his head impatientlike I ain’t hear his question right – saysagain – yeah, but what part of Americais that, landing on the that, the t-h hardas the d in the dirt yard – my own triangularslave trade stop, to him, indistinguishablefrom his own, so now I channel my people,teachers all of them, think to myself - brotheris a visual learner - so I break off the lowesthanging dry branch, from the tree whose rootsrun under the outhouse and I get down in the dirtto draw homie a map. I draw the fat spread shapeof America, its northern border like a shallow wokits craggy outpost of Atlantic shore. I show him the vaguemass that is Canada, and roughly point out the Eastcoast to him – New York, where we just came fromDC, which we just drove through – Virginia just Northof here, I tell him, the Carolinas where we are I say.

John is half-nodding looking on with a frown,sipping his Mad Dog 20/20. I get to the hangingpeninsula of Florida – and I fancy myself Jesusnow like in the story of the adulteress brought to himby the Pharisees, where he’s drawing on the ground the wholetime – I’m like that, messianic in my lessonsI show him Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico – all countriesI’m sure he’s heard of before, and I’m almostin love with my cartographic genius now, fillingin the Bahamas, Martinique, St. Kitts, St. Lucia,Barbados, Grenada and finally with a calligrapher’sflourish, I fill in Trinidad which I haven’t seen since I leftthe year before, and I’m thinking of beaches, and Marciato whom I made love at night at the edge of one of thosebeaches on my birthday, three months before I left,who as I was drawing was still mourning us, mourningwhen I met John’s sister at a barin New York City. I fill in the vaguesilhouette of South America, next to the home I haveno idea when I’ll see again, and I say and here, Johnhere is Trinidad.

Inside, Big Mama is telling stories about sharecropping,her uncle who could dance his behind off, and whitepeople back in the daythe other men, bored have moved off – talkingabout their trailer home extensions, car enginescrops, guns, women. It’s almost quiet when I lookback up at John, who is slightly agitated now – squintsat my artwork, right hand dangling at his side, thumband forefinger gently choking the flask’s throat,he points dismissively at the end of the drawing saysyeah Rog – but what part of ‘murrica is that – Americafinally full of white people, and fields, and basketballand highways in his mouth – America of chitterlingsand blues landing in John’s beautiful song

- I look into the trees for somethingI can’t yet name. At the exact same timewe each bring a flask to our mouths. Wegulp hard.

Things to Take with You When You Move 807 Miles Away from HomeA drum, a Masaai spear, 2 fryingpans, a three time boughtcopy of My American Kundiman, clothes pins,an acoustic guitar, red Pumaswith the white stripe, blackPumas, with the black stripe, silverPumas with the yellow stripe

the pictures of me – still looking out my back window,sing-back of songs I’ve sung. I’m goingto meet my daughter or my maker, dependingon how you call God, god.

the green coffee cup Vicki gave methe ceramic pipe Alex gavethe dominoes Thuli gave me and the imagining of teaching them to my daughter, the tiles just small enough for her hands when she first learns to slap them on a folding table and pray out loudSelected Poems by Derek WalcottOmeros by Derek WalcottWhite Egrets by Derek Walcottthe black bicycle with the redstripes and green handles leaned in the lobbyknivesa Yankees capa White Sox capBrooklyn on three capsa green fedora with a feather wornhigh on the head, like a rudeboy, like the knives are sharp

and a lover’s tawny body in my bed, Jack Gilbert’s entire oeuvre between us. I need all this, and the slow weeping of dinner, and the succulent pork and eggs and chicken and noodles and herbs from my friend’s mother’s yard – how they made me feel strong today.The Lucille Clifton poem that endsEveryday, something has tried to kill meand has failedTake the last stale cigar, the half finished tinof Bustelo, the photographs of the loverwith the ornate tattoo at the base of her spineor rather, the photograph of her feetOne Hundred Years of Solitudewith the cover torn offthe promises to the ex-lover to readthe entire thing to her.

Take the black bear coat from the Serbianlover. Take the broken watch.Take the carving of two loversentwined. Take the black sleeksweater, the sheepskin coat. TakeBushwick and the slap of your flipflops on the sidewalk to the Laundromatback with you. Take the upnod, thug greetto the brothers mid-block.The poem has always been a field; since Frost, always these prosodic, precise lines meant to grow things out of their fallow, always our uncles, fathers in that field marshaling one death or another – take the yoga mat, the white candle you burned at New Year, the first draft in pencil that stayed on your night stand and made you remember whom you hurt most – take the brand new bottle of lubricant, the new sleek black shoes with the red laces, take the kettle bell and the barbell and the smell of that last lover on your sheetsWhat is the news that interrupts?What is the death that intervenes?What is the nature of joy and surprise if not to havethe plough diverted from its neat and reverent lines?

Take the car seat, the diapers, the rocker (for the girl)Take the Dr. Seuss, the blue onesie, the diaper bag (for the girl)Take your father’s excuses (for the girl)Take the copy of Head Off, and Split by Nikki Finney (for the girl)Take Audre Lorde (for the girl)Take the last Sunday morning in Brooklyn, with Mahalia Jacksonon repeat. Take Nina Simone singing Ne me quitte pas, on repeat.Take the lover and you curled up and reading everything you could find

I want to walk them the new shoes into a field where my father is ploughing and tell him how I once dragged a boy down the stairs, how I tried to drag a man out of a moving car, how I threw my arms opened like I was receiving an ovation, as I leaned backward out of a speeding car and tried to make mush of another man’s face. I want him to know his absence ordered their deaths. I do not know if this is true. My blackness co-conspires in everything. Take Amiri Baraka’s Somebody Blew up America. I am my father’s fourth child of six we know of. I am the news that interrupts, the ghost who carries his shoulders into war. Take the bicycle with the white tires, the fast one, (so you can get to the girl). I am walking into the field to tell my father that I love him, no matter how many carcasses he bids me fetch in the dream.

three love lettersa small caliber guna thick-mouthed lover’s kiss as you leave for what feels like forever, as you leave your heart, leave Brooklyn, leave the graffiti that said come home and the memory of the nights you stepped over the dead before police made it safe for others to come into your hood

a five-dollar crucifixa fresco of St. Christopher, the patron saint of travelers,or maybe that’s St. Jude in there, the patronsaint of lost causesthe curled copy of her sonograma picture of your own handsof your fathera blanket bought in Germany

where am I going? What is the nature of the field? What am I moving towards if my plough stays straight if I keep looking over my shoulder for the girl to come – so beautifulin her brand newshoes. Her shoulders arepowerful. She has doneas ordered. Her hands(the ones you’re moving toward)are brimmed in blood

Coming Home

Brooklyn comes back to me nowwith all the wonder of a phantomlimb, reattached. The corner’s rhythmsmaking their way back into the bodystanza by stanza. Look there’s the bodega,the Laundromat, the liquor store, the sneakerstore, the liquor store, the bodega, the bodegathe Dominican breakfast spot, the St. Jameschurch of God, incorporated, the liquor store,the bodega – oh; a new French bistro. SeemsI can close my eyes and find all of theseby walking a requisite number of stepsin any given direction. Even the lopeof my fellow Brooklynites, the one thatre-enters me in these blueprint swaggers,is familiar again – its own hat-tilt and head-nod, its own wave across the block, its owndisaffected gentrifying too-cool hipsters.And look: Russell loves Tinamaria,OddFellow, OJ “Left” in bubble letters– the graffiti waves back. The writers get upeverywhere, and in desperation. It’s how I knowI’m home again. Everyone is in a little bitof pain, and making it look beautifulas a sunset in a smog-filled sky – bodega,liquor store, liquor store, bodega, the HighTimes Church of the Christ our Lord andagain, the darkest hand-styled scrawl,Tina, I miss you. Come home.

Previously unpublished poems. Upon further publication, please credit first publication as IthacaLit.